Deeply unfashionable, hugely popular
Simon Ward
It's been on for ages and everyone says it's wonderful,' said my mother as she took me to a proper theatre for the first time. The play was The Mousetrap, I was 13 and the production was already a phenomenal success. The Mousetrap and I are now somewhat longer in the tooth and hardly a week passes without photographs of anniversary parties appearing in the press; parties, that is, for the extraordinary survival of Agatha Christie's play, my own celebrations being of a more private nature.
But after 50 years of eight performances a week no one is saying The Mousetrap is wonderful any more. Rather its continuing success is ascribed to its continuing success. It's like the Tower of London — tourist landmark.' Perhaps because it takes vigorous prayer and Maggie Smith to keep a play running for five months rather than 50 years these days, its success is resented, which has led to dismissal of Dame Agatha and all her works. At a time when readers of thrillers and whodunits have become fully qualified forensic experts, steeped to their elbows in the stink and slime that is real death, Christie's tales of gentler, more lavender days have become deeply unfashionable. But now comes a new collection of Agatha Christie Audio Books from Macmillan, and it is a triumph.
It's a truism among actors that if you think playing Lear is tough, then try spending the summer on the end of the pier in a Cooney farce. But those who know will say, `Ah, hut try six months on the road in Murder at the Vicarage.' It has become harder to make Christie work convincingly on stage or screen, however good the performances or adaptation. On these tapes we return to the original, read by the best in the business, and the result is thoroughly satisfying. To sit back and be led gently through this clever nonsense by the most seductive and intelligent of tones is pure joy and I found it difficult to wipe the smile from my face throughout.
To choose a favourite from this selection is impossible but it would be hard to resist Ian Masters's Murder at the Vicarage, a reading which recalls E. F. Benson in murderous mood, or Nigel Anthony's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. I am something of a collector of Hercule Poirots and, as little Belgians go, the always brilliant Nigel Anthony is perfection. One successful television Poirot recently resealed that the answer to getting the moustachioed 'tee right was to wear too tight shoes. It would be interesting to know if Mr Anthony had to go to such lengths.
It is the sophisticated treatment of the narratives that entrances. For listeners hearing these books for the first time it may come as some surprise how very funny Miss Christie can be. It says much for the talent of the readers that they reveal the humour without ever appearing to be mocking the text or forgetting the mystery. They walk the tightrope of eccentric character voices and curious tales with an assurance and skill that invests the stories with a remembered charm of which I feared time might finally have robbed our much loved 'Queen of Mystery'.
Macmillan Audio Books, Agatha Christie Collection. Running times 3 hours. They Do It with Mirrors read by Rosemary Leach. And Then There Were None read by David Horovitch. Sparkling Cyanide read by Nigel Anthony. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd read by Nigel Anthony. Murder at the Vicarage read by Ian Masters. Murder on the Orient Express read by Andrew Sachs.
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